The Tesla Model 3, which is set to be released in 2018, in pictures.

Related articles

“We are going to make some capital investments towards the end of this year related to Model Y,” Musk said during the Q4 2017 earnings call.

“I don’t want to jump the gun on those, but I think we’ve got a good plan.

“I’m pretty excited about how we’re designing Model Y.

“It’s really taking a lot of lessons learned from Model 3 and saying how do we design something to be easy to manufacture instead of how to manufacture or difficult, really.”

It was also confirmed that the production plans and location the Model Y would be built will be unveiled in the next three to six months.

TESLA

Tesla Model 3 was launched in 2017

This hints at a new facility, which could be in China, after a deal to build a factory in Shanghai was reached towards the tail end of 2017.

These sentiments were confirmed in the earnings call with Musk targeting the Chinese market with the Model Y.

“It’s sort of a rough target of start of production in about three years and it would be serving the China market and perhaps some other countries in the region and that’s really the intent,” said Musk in last year’s Q3 earnings call to analysts.

“[Tesla] won’t be making Model S and Model X, but we’ll be making probably Model 3, probably Model Y primarily for the local Chinese market and it’s really the only way to make the cars affordable in China, but it’s three years out, so.”

Details about the Model Y’s specs, design and performance are currently unknown.

What it known is that it will be built on the same platform as the Model Y and will be a crossover/SUV style vehicle.

This means that it will be more compact than the Model X and could feature similar styling to the Model 3 much like the Model X shares a lot of the design DNA of the Model S.

Tesla also stated its goal of producing one million cars a year by 2020, which means that production targets for the Model Y will be more aggressive than those for the Model 3.

Whether or not the volume of production for the car will result in a lower starting price, however, remains to be seen.